


The Pretenders

by seashadows



Category: The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Attempted Murder, Canonical Character Death, Dáin is a good person, F/M, I am so sorry, M/M, Major Character Death (outside of canon), Multi, Murder, the first two relationships named above are spoken of in their past occurrence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-28
Updated: 2016-08-06
Packaged: 2018-05-23 15:17:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6120674
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seashadows/pseuds/seashadows
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When two royal imposters appear in Erebor, they bring not only a string of murders in their wake, but unrest that threatens to shatter the reign of Dáin Ironfoot and brings to the surface obscured questions regarding loyalty to both Dáin, and the memory of Thorin Oakenshield.</p><p>(Or in which the surviving members of Thorin's Company have to put their heads together and rise up against the first threat of their new king's reign - in whatever way that may be.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So this is a story I've been thinking about for a while. 
> 
> I will admit that my knowledge of English history is rather thin and patchy (forgive me, I'm American). However, I do know that the reign of Henry VII, who was a distant cousin of both the Lancastrian and Yorkist branches of the royal family, essentially took the throne by conquest in 1485 and was not universally beloved. His reign was plagued with two pretenders: Lambert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck, both of whom at some point claimed to be one or both of the murdered Princes in the Tower - Edward and Richard, sons of Edward IV, imprisoned by their uncle Richard III and presumed murdered by him - and thus the rightful heir to the English throne. 
> 
> Neither of these boys ever managed to depose Henry. However, there were plenty who believed that they were real, to the point that Perkin Warbeck earned the support of the Scottish throne and married a woman with ties to their royal family. It didn't help that Henry had a habit of taking off the heads of relatives he thought were aiming for his seat. Even some historians and writers today believe that Perkin Warbeck, in particular, was actually Richard of York. 
> 
> Surely there must have been similar opportunists with eyes on the throne of Erebor. 
> 
> What if?

It was warmer here in the best mine than in the whole rest of the mountain, despite the lack of fires – or maybe that was just the drink. Bofur couldn’t care less which. The mountain was treacherous. It had killed Thorin, had killed his nephews, two strong lads who had only the misfortune to be born in the line of Durin. Mines were dependable, and as safe as stone could be. The only dangers that came about in a gem or ore mine were those you stupidly started yourself.

Bofur took a drink from his flask and leaned, arms crossed, against the wall of the mine. The stone was cool against his back and he spread his arms out against it to let the damp coldness seep through his clothes and into his skin. He was so _hot_. In the quarters he shared with Bif and Bom, he always shivered, except when he took to the hardest drink he could scrounge from Nori or one of the less reputable men of Dale – then he sweated and burned, but he also forgot about the dent that the death of his king had punched clean into his heart. 

“There’s an inn, there’s an inn, there’s a merry old inn,” he sang suddenly, reaching up to clutch one of the shining metal support bars with both hands and lift his feet off the ground. His voice echoed down the mine corridor and came back to him, haunting; tears filled his eyes. Every mine here had been fitted out with new supports, new everything, and those who had died ought to have been there to see it. If he sang enough, would Thorin’s voice echo back? 

Bofur let go of the support, grunting, and with a cry, slammed his hand into the rough mine wall. The pain shocked away his tears and he clutched his hand against his chest. He could feel his heart pounding. “Oh,” he said. “Oh.” Nothing would fix his life except forgetting. “Here’s to you.” He lifted his flask and drank down five enormous gulps, searing his throat, sputtering and choking on it. This stuff was nearly fermented piss, but it’d do. 

He pressed the knuckles of his uninjured hand against the wall for support, pushed off, and staggered farther down the dark corridor. No, he realized through his squinted eyes, not _dark_. Not entirely. A torch still smoldered by the pulleys that led to the deeper shaft, undoubtedly from some careless miner who hadn’t put it out right. Lazy wanker probably wanted a celebration, that was what had happened. “Gas us all, burn us all,” Bofur slurred, “that’s right.” 

But was he afraid to die, should a gas bubble belch up from the depths? He thought about that for a moment. “No.” It would only be what he deserved, and what he desired. How wonderful would it be to sleep away the rest of his would-be life? With new vigor, he grabbed the torch and blew it back to a full flame, then peered down the dark shaft with his light held over his head. 

Bofur closed his eyes and staggered, rocking forward against the edge, as he inhaled. It smelled good down here, a proper mine. Wet stone and sulfur from the blast sticks he’d smelled all his life, new metal, and a sweeter scent than the others: gems in the stone, calling to him. A sudden urge seized him, and he knew he had to go down there. 

No one had disengaged the pulleys. That was a mercy. “Thanks,” Bofur said through another mouthful of the shite in his flask, and clambered into a mining bucket, then unlooped the pull rope from its hook with one hand and began to let himself down. Inch by inch he went, slowly and jerkily, until he hit the bottom of the shaft with a thump that reverberated his skull. 

“Shallow,” he said. It wasn’t unexpected. They called the newest mine the best for its location, forsaking the older, emptier ones for gems to pay off those treacherous Mannish and the Elves. “ _Pah!_ ” He spat on the floor. Thorin was right not to trust them. Hadn’t they distracted the armies, hadn’t they imprisoned the entire Company when Bom was still near to death from their bloody river, hadn’t they near led the Orcs right to where the precious King of the Dwarves and his heirs fought? “Tha’s fer the _Elves_.” 

Streaks of multicolored gem and metal veins flashed in the rough walls when he pointed his torch towards them, and oil from the fire dripped onto the rock floor. “Think I’ll take…a wee walk,” he singsonged. The notes came back to him and banged about in his skull, making him wince. “Now _that_ hurts.” 

But he’d not taken three steps when his foot bumped something and he stumbled all over again. His arms circled about like he was a water wheel powering the forge. The torch fell from his hand, hit the floor, and by some grace of Mahal still burned in a bright enough smolder to cast a shadow on what he’d hit. 

There lay a Dwarf, a burly one by the look of him, facedown and spread-limbed. “Hel- _loooo_ ,” Bofur said to him. Must have been another poor sod wanting to get drunk on a night like this. What a welcoming mine this was, if _two_ Dwarves were to meet by chance hours before the arse-crack of dawn. “Who’s this? Come t’enjoy yerself?” 

No reply. Bofur squinted, and for a moment, the Dwarf split into two Dwarves. He would have touched him, but he wasn’t quite sure which Dwarf was real and which was the drink. “Sloshed, are we?” He touched the fellow’s ear with the tip of his boot and tilted his head a bit to the side. _Ought to wake him up_. That always got Bom after him with a shout, calling him a botherer and a few less savory things in the Old Tongue. 

The head moved, all right. As soon as Bofur took his boot away, though, the Dwarf’s face hit the floor again with a heavy thump that had to hurt. Why wasn’t he moving? “Oi! Up, you!” Bofur sank down to his knees – even that much effort made his vision waver and his head pound – and began to push at the bulkily-muscled shoulders. “ _Ooof_ ,” he puffed, “ye’ll owe me, no mistake, y’arsehole. _Dizhat-turg!_ ” Finding someone drunker than he was, now that was a rarity these days. A few more nights of vomit on the doorstep and Bif and Bom probably wouldn’t have him in the house any longer. 

Finally, by all that was good, his efforts led to something. The Dwarf tipped over, first sideways, then flat onto his back. “Better luck next,” Bofur began, and then he sucked in his breath. 

This was no Dwarf. This was a _corpse_. The one eye that remained in his face pointed dully up the mineshaft, with the other caved into the broken bowl that made up half his skull. Blood pooled beneath him, nastily sticky and long congealed by the way it stuck to Bofur’s hands. “By the Maker,” Bofur whispered, “what’s been done?” He choked, _gagged_ on the sour acid and bitter bile in his throat. “Who…by all…” On hands and knees, he shuffled forward; his stomach heaved, but nothing came out save the sound of his retching. 

The torch flickered, and then it was guttering, dying, dead. The last licks of light showed Bofur a sight he’d never forget: the ear on the side of the Dwarf’s head that remained, serrated with old bite scars and _familiar_. He had to have touched it a dozen times while he protected its owner, and he Bofur in turn. 

“Mahal’s beard and balls,” he croaked into the darkness, and then he tilted his head up and screamed, “Dwarf down, by Mahal, fuck, Dwarf _down!_ ”

-

“Dwalin Fundinul,” said Dáin. His voice echoed around the court hall of Erebor – not the main one, the fine one where common petitioners and matters of state that lacked secrecy occurred. No, as soon as he’d heard of the Dwarves involved, he’d decided it would be more prudent to question Bofur Boburul in the small court hall next to the royal quarters, where Thorin’s trusted Company could always find a welcome. “You are sure of it.”

The Dwarf before him, haggard from drink, fear, and a sleepless night, nearly hung from the arms of his brother and cousin on either side of him. The stench of drunken sweat and vomit wafted off him. “Sure of it,” he said for the second time that morning. Dáin was sorry to put him to the question so early in the day, and so repeatedly, when he was obviously both reeling from what he’d found and hung to the gills. “Aye, I’d know that ear. And when they pulled us out from the mine, I could pick out a few o’ Dwalin’s tattoos.” 

Bofur would have no reason to lie, no matter what had been clouding his judgment the previous night. From nobility to mere merchant and miner, every Dwarf of Thorin’s Company had proven his valor and honor to Dáin in the year since the main branch of the Line of Durin had met a heart-wrenching and grisly end at Azog and his son’s hands. “The guards who found you confirmed his identity,” he said gruffly. His throat was thick with grief that he didn’t dare show. No crowned king could be seen wailing and tearing his hair, even at the death of a cousin and friend. How had Dwalin survived Azanulbizar and the second battle that killed their kin both, only to die alone in a mine? “What do you know of them?” 

Bofur pulled his arm free of Bifur’s grasp and, swaying, wiped his forearm across his face. “Which one?” His sleeve muffled his voice. “Austri or Lofar?” 

“Both,” Dáin said. Both had come from Ered Luin in the constant train of migrating Dwarves sometime in these past few months. By all reports, the Elf-king was vexed at the number of the people he hated most coming through his lands – with guaranteed safe passage, no less. _Good_. “I don’t know much of their character. What can you tell me?” 

Nori held up a finger from his place at Dáin’s elbow. “I know ‘em, Your Grace,” he put in. “Every Dwarf in Ered Luin, gimme a name and I’ll give you where they live.” 

Spymaster though he might be, Nori couldn’t necessarily be trusted to give an opinion that was…perhaps it was politest to say _uncolored_ by his days in the grimiest streets and pockets of the Blue Mountains. On a matter as serious as this, neutrality was crucial. Dáin rubbed at his brow beneath the heavy, tilting crown. “I asked it of Bofur,” he said. “If I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it next, Nori.” 

Bofur took his face away from his tunic. “They’re both o’ them fine Dwarves,” he said. “Fine families. Austri grew up poor, I think. Wife and two wee ones, he’s got. I know Lofar from my minin’ days. Never heard nowt scary about either o’ them.” 

“You’re certain?” Dáin said. 

“Aye,” said Bofur. “They were both on scheduled guardin’ shifts, far as I know. Nothin’ suspicious. Ugh.” He slumped in place and squeezed his eyes shut. “I swear, your Grace, that’s all I know. It’s a right tragedy.” 

There would be no benefit in questioning him any more. Dáin could have seen that even with his own eyes closed. “You’re dismissed,” he said, “but send Balin Fundinul in, if he can be found. And only if he’s willin’.” He wouldn’t pin his hopes on Balin showing up, with his brother freshly dead in circumstances no one could fathom. There was a hard knot of mystery here that Dáin had few hopes of untangling without the help of every great mind in the Mountain. Balin would be a good start. “Nori, stay, please.” 

Nori leaned against the throne and watched Bofur and his relatives leave. “Tell me anything about anyone and I’ll find it out,” he said. “Whatever we need to kill these bastards. I’ll stab ‘em myself if I’ve got to.” 

Dáin’s mouth fell open. “Nori, what’s gotten into you?” 

Nori turned his head slowly towards Dáin, and for the first time, Dáin could see his eyes. They were as dead as Dwalin’s, dull, but with distant hurt behind them that looked to have been shoved violently away. “We was to marry,” he said. “Soon as everything got a bit more settled. Dwalin would’ve ‘ad me move into his quarters like I was Fundinul, not a stonechild. That’s how much he loved me.” 

“Oh,” said Dáin. “Ach, Nori…” Dwalin’s killers had broken apart a couple as good as wed, then. Small wonder Nori slumped and no wonder he spoke of death, of revenge. “What can I do?” 

His spymaster’s eyes hardened. “Let me go after them,” he said, and for once, he forced out every word as clear as a bell instead of letting out the nearly close-mouthed drawl of the lower parts of Ered Luin. “They’re mine.” 

Would that he could. Nori would be faster than an assassin, Dáin knew. There were a few who swore up and down they’d seen him slit throats in shadowed alleys and leave as quietly as the death he’d inflicted. There were many more who said that he was never seen. His tongue wouldn’t wag and his words would be forever locked away, as Nori was not a gossip. “I can’t,” Dáin said; it was what had to be said, as much as he regretted the necessity. “People would talk, and the law says –“ 

“Fuck the law! It’s _shite!_ ” Nori’s voice echoed off the stone columns along the walls and now, in his fury, his accent came back. “Bloody bastards killed my Dwalin and I want their blood! Finer Dwarf never lived – who’d they think they was t’ take him?” He clenched his fists and beat them against his thighs. “I can stab ‘em, poison ‘em, whatever suits yer fancy, just let me do it!” 

“And what if you killed the wrong ones?” Dáin stood and took Nori by the arms. Anger flushed his face and he could feel his voice rumbling like thunder. “You don’t know everything. What you’re askin’ for is a fool’s quest, don’t you know that? _No one_ expected this to happen to Dwalin. I guarantee ye, a fine lot of work went into covering the tracks of whoever did this!” 

Nori struggled in his grasp. Dáin had never seen such hate in his eyes. “Lemme go!” he bellowed. “He was gonna be my _husband!_ ” 

Dáin looked wildly around the room as he tried to hold on to Nori. Born and raised in the Iron Hills, he had never been privy to many council meetings in these chambers. On visits, he had sat in on Thorin’s lessons or played with baby Dis, and so he had no idea what kinds of secret passageways hid in the walls. The positions of the arrayed gems against the smooth stone told nothing of what lay underneath. “Keep your voice down!” He finally got a good hold on Nori’s shoulders and gave him a short shake. “It doesn’t do any good to speak of killin’. What if someone heard?” 

“Someone’d ‘ave me head on a pole,” Nori said. He shook still, though he’d stopped struggling, and his close-set eyes shone bright above the long, truly Durinul hook of his nose. What they said of his mother’s ancestry had to be true. 

“Aye.” Dáin let him go, slowly uncurling his hands from around Nori’s shoulders to make sure he wouldn’t bolt for the door. There was more he had to say. “Listen, Nori. I can try to command ye, but I know you’ll only disregard what y’don’t want to hear. So I’ll only say this: if you have any interest in keeping this kingdom stable, don’t do nowt rash.” 

Nori began to back away. His feet found the edges of the dais with an ease that Dáin himself hadn’t yet mastered. Then, he wasn’t part ferret, slippery and tricky with a knack for holding onto the smoothest ledges and most worn-away corners. “I’m not stupid,” he said. Although quieter than before, his voice seemed to echo ever louder. “I don’t want you or your family dead. Gimme leave to go now, will you?” 

Dáin suppressed a sigh. “You’ve leave,” he said, “but I’ll see you out.” He descended from the dais and followed Nori’s skipping steps to the door, his stature allowing him to quickly catch up to the spymaster. 

Nori darted down the dark hallway as soon as they left the chamber. Dáin left it to his own guards, still standing outside where he’d left them, to shut the heavy stone doors and secure their locks. “Less fruitful than I’d have liked,” he muttered. Vit and Dyr were Dwarves of his own people, sons of lesser nobles from the Iron Hills. He’d known them since he was only a child of forty. “You can’t ever pin Nori down.” 

“Aye,” said Vit, “we know,” and ran his hand over the dust-colored crest on top of his head that named him a warrior for all to see. The golden rings he wore in his eyebrows showed his ancestry: Stiffbeard and Ironfist, not Durinul, but hardly anything to scoff at. “Nori’s been stealin’ again. I heard reports of missing things this morning.” 

Dyr, a great stone block of a Dwarf with skin the color of Vit’s hair, walked to catch up with Dáin when he started down the corridor wending around the side of the council chamber that led to the royal quarters. “Dáin,” he said, for Dáin felt he’d go mad with loneliness if even his friends distanced themselves with titles and had said so, “he’s out of control. It’ll be your head and his if it gets worse.” 

Dáin rubbed a hand over his face. “There’s little enow I can do,” he said. Kings, as he’d found out in the year since his cousin’s death, had a hair-thin line to walk. There was the rub – the contentious disputes Óin Groinul constantly got into with the new healers, Nori’s thieving, Bofur’s drinking, the Dwarves beyond the Company who made no secret that they’d little love for Dáin as king, all of those things fell under his purview. Discipline too harshly and he’d come under the scrutiny of the old royalists, and lose all respect, inciting outright anarchy, if he failed to discipline at all. “Durin’s beard, I wouldn’t wish this job on anyone.” 

“We know that, too,” Dyr said. He dared to clap a hand on Dáin’s shoulder. Had they not been alone, that would have drawn gasps from anyone near, but they were and Dáin was glad of the touch. “We can maybe send people after Nori. Not under your banner, of course, and no violence. He’s just got to know the situation.” 

“I’m sure he does,” Dáin replied tiredly. What he wouldn’t give to be back home in the Iron Hills. No matter how long he reigned here, in this too-large mountain with its twisting dark corridors and every alcove haunted by the ghosts of those he couldn’t save, Erebor would never be his home. “Aye, well, his brother’s under Balin Fundinul’s tutelage. Gather ‘em all three together and let Balin tell him what might happen to his family’s prospects if –“ It was too late, but he closed his mouth anyway and cursed himself for an idiot. Whose brother was it who had just died? Whose murder had he spent the morning trying to untie? Balin would be of no use as an adviser for a very long time. 

Vit led them around a sharp corner into the ever-darkening catacomb of tunnels that would take them to the center of the mountain, and took a torch off the wall to light their way. No light from the gem-cutters’ open workshops below could reach here. “Balin Fundinul will be at your quarters,” he said in his quiet, measured way. 

“Who sent for him?” Dáin demanded. “Ach, a meetin’ now? He’d better not have been dragged away from important matters.” 

“You sent for him,” said Dyr. “Said t’have him here after you met with Bofur and the guards. Slow up, Vit, y’great arse, you’ll have the torch out.” He pulled the torch out of his fellow guard’s hand and set to a slower pace. The light still guttered, and shadowed pits appeared in the rough walls. This deep, the old builders had left off polishing them, apparently so that assassins would confuse themselves in the shadows. 

“Ah,” Dáin said. “I did.” He had forgotten, yet another thing to curse himself for. It would be enough of a blow to Balin to hear about his brother’s murder, even worse if he heard it from a disheveled king who hadn’t bothered to remember the appointment. “I’ll have to see him.” 

The corridor took another sharp left turn, then a right, and there was the double door to the royal quarters, worked in iron with insets of silver and gold. Bright oil lamps shone on either side, and a guard lounged against the wall under one of them: Tyrís, Dyr’s sister, a dam nearly as tall and broad as her brother, but with more hair to her head. “Balin Fundinul’s within,” she said simply. By Mahal, those two had always been near enough to reading each other’s minds. “The queen’s got him distracted with tea.” 

Not only tea, Dáin would wager. Amarra had a taste for fine ales and whiskeys, and a more discerning tongue he had never encountered. There was no doubt that the contents of Balin’s cup were more alcoholic than not for the news he was about to hear. “Thank ye for telling me,” he said. “Tyrís, you’re relieved if ye want. Dyr, if you’ll take her shift?” 

“Ach, twist me arm a bit more, sad-eyes,” said Dyr, slapping his sister’s back. Tyrís nodded at Dáin and slipped neatly out of position and down the hall. No telling how long she’d been standing there. Inside this mountain, Dáin couldn’t keep track of time in his meetings with half a dozen councilors there, never mind questioning or seeing complainants alone. 

Then Vit opened one of the doors for him and Dáin came inside the echoing hall from which all the rooms of the royal quarters branched. “Hello?” he said. His voice was sonorous in the dimness. By Mahal’s Hobbit-scented beard, he’d never get used to that. “Amarra?” 

“In here,” said his wife. He found the kitchen by sound and emerged into the room, not nearly as well-appointed as the main kitchens near the great gates, but good enough for private meals. A block of bright gray stone rose from the floor, and it was there that his wife and Balin sat. Cups of tea steamed in front of both of them – the best cups, no less. “Was your morning productive?” Amarra asked. 

“Well enough,” said Dáin. He took a seat on the nearest chair, padded by brocade cushions that his eldest son had worked. “Master Balin,” he said, “it grieves me to tell ye what I have to tell ye.” 

Balin looked at him with sorrowful, shadowed eyes. “I’m listening,” he said, but Dáin could tell from his face alone that this news was no news to him.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In one moment, Dáin reigned, and in the next, chaos and pandemonium did together.

The Dwarves standing before Dáin’s throne were no people Glóin knew. They were wrapped entirely in dark traveling cloaks, but he prided himself on being able to tell anyone by posture and they were entirely unfamiliar. “Were these petitioners on the docket?” he whispered to his brother, close enough to his ear horn that Óin wouldn’t have to shout for a louder question. “Thought it was meant to be a light day, I did.” He’d agreed to come to every third meeting of Dáin’s court, but that didn’t mean he liked being pulled away from a meeting of the financiers’ guild. He needed to be there or they’d replace him among the deciding-Dwarves with a wagstaff like Onar Nyrathul, who couldn’t tell pure gold from the inside of his arse if he bit both of them. 

“’Twas,” said Óin, frowning through his beard. “I don’t know who these people are.” 

From his throne, Dáin lifted his chin and regarded the cloaked Dwarves. “Come forward,” he said. The words still sat wrong on his tongue, Glóin could tell. Poor bugger never expected to be king; he’d been raised to be Lord of the Iron Hills, which boasted an entirely different sort of people as far as Glóin knew. “I will hear you.” 

“I am Hefti of the Blue Mountains,” said the foremost Dwarf in the throng. His voice rose above the chatter in the hall, clear but guttural. “My shield-brother is Nithi of the Blue Mountains. We have journeyed a long time to reach the true home of our people, Dáin son of Náin.” 

“Hefti an’ Nithi,” Óin said in as close to a whisper as he ever got. “Sons and daughters of who and who, I ask ye? Do we know them?” 

“Can’t see their faces,” Glóin said, but as far as he could tell, they were no Dwarves he knew. He pulled his guild-master’s robe tight around him and suppressed a shiver. Shameful that he could spend his childhood here, but be taken down by winter’s normal chill after the Blue Mountains. The closest things to a warming fire in the throne room were the torches on the walls, and he couldn’t bloody well warm his hands on them. “Pardon,” he said instead, and began to push through the Dwarves around him. He needed to get a glimpse of the newcomers’ faces. 

Dáin stroked his beard, which he still wore long and loose. Elbowing his way through the crowd, Glóin strained to keep his eyes on him. “I welcome you to Erebor, Hefti and Nithi of the Blue Mountains,” he said. “How may I help you now that you’ve arrived?” 

“You can help us by stepping down,” said the one Hefti had indicated as Nithi. Glóin sharply drew in his breath, and heard nearly everyone else do the same; it was as if the hall itself had given a gasp of surprise. “Dáin son of Nain, Lord of the Iron Hills, we name you no true king of Erebor. You’ve usurped the throne from the true heirs.” 

It was as if Dáin had been struck by lightning, an invisible bolt of it that left him looking dazed, mouth open and hair – Glóin could swear – on end. “By whose bloody authority do ye say that?” he blurted out, and if there were any Dwarf alive who blamed him for letting his accent out at a time like this, Glóin didn’t want to know their names for the temptation to beat them senseless. He shoved his elbows into a few more people, who grumbled but let him past, and managed to come close enough for a look at these liars’ faces before they spoke again. 

When Hefti opened his mouth, it was with a sneer. “By the _authority_ of the true heirs,” he said. His left hand rose in a fist, then unfurled, and he pointed at the two Dwarves huddled behind him and Nithi who had yet to speak. “I present Fíli and Kíli, sons of Dis, daughter of Thrain, heir apparent _and_ heir presumptive of Erebor.” And with those words, the silent Dwarves lifted their heads and removed the hoods of their cloaks. 

In one moment, Dáin reigned, and in the next, chaos and pandemonium did together. In the roar of the crowd, Glóin could hear neither Dáin’s response nor the voices of either of these supposed Fíli and Kíli – preposterous! Impossible, when every Dwarf of the Company had seen their bodies after climbing, broken and exhausted, up Ravenhill’s slope! – and an elbow in his ribs made him nearly lose his footing on the slippery golden floor. “Óin!” he bellowed, struck with sudden fear. “Óin, where are ye?” Cheers, unmistakable cheers, rose up with the rest of the sound. Were there really so many old royalists among them? Which among them hated Dáin so? 

“Here – hush, hush, _nadadê_ , come wi’ me.” His brother took him by the shoulder and began to drag him away. Glóin stumbled away on legs that seemed to have lost all feeling. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so weak. “Get away from this madhouse before yer trampled,” Óin in muttered into his ear. “Come on. Come on.” The crabbed hand on his arm gripped as strongly as a pair of tongs. 

“Can’t,” Glóin got out as they left the throne room faster than he could ever remember Óin moving in recent years. Óin muscled past the crowds of frantic Dwarves with both elbows, bellowing things in Khuzdul that ranged from polite to the rudest of exhortations to move their arses. “Got to find Dáin –“ If there were false princes about, with handlers who called Dáin no true king, then that could only mean that they meant to do something to him as well. 

Óin yanked him along harder through the tide of people. “Never you mind,” he said, then louder, “ _Move!_ ” With that, he turned a corner and nearly yanked Glóin’s arm out of its socket as he pulled them into an alcove behind a gold-worked tapestry. “Aye, now,” he finished, and finally let go of Glóin’s hand. “We’ve got a wee problem.” 

By Mahal’s _stones_ , they had a problem. “More than that,” Glóin snarled. “I’ve got to find Dáin!” 

He made to go, but Óin blocked him with a thick arm. His brother was far too old to be as damned strong as he was; it wasn’t fair. “Dáin’s always got his two blockheads wi’ him,” Óin said, as exasperated as he’d ever sounded. “They’ll make sure he gets to safety. Now _listen_ to me, Glóin! I did’na become a healer by gawpin’ at problems and bullin’ into them like a warg.” 

“Wargs don’t bull!” They’d both seen enough of them to know. “Óin, those two –“ 

“ – they’re not Fíli and Kíli,” Óin finished before he could. “O’course they’re not, thickhead! Everyone who’s ever met ‘em will know that right off. Why do you think they announced it in the middle of court?” 

Glóin’s blood suddenly ran cold, and he felt the hairs at the back of his neck that were too short for his new braids stand straight up. “It’s a strategy,” he said. His pounding heart sped up all over again. “Get them to safety. Feed the forge wi’ it.” 

Óin sighed, set a hand on Glóin’s shoulder, and shook it. “Think harder,” he said. “Who’s died?” 

“Dwalin, ye clod.” The words were out of his mouth before Glóin could think about them, but when he did, _oh_ \- his head spun. “D’ye think…” 

“Shut up!” Óin hit Glóin’s mouth with the heel of his hand, which smelled of stale smoke and herbs gone off. “Come with me, _nadadê_. Your chambers, and Nori’ll find us to tell us what’s happened soon. Come now, hold onto my hand.” 

Óin had led him just this way when Glóin was a wee Dwarfling, toddling behind his big brother. Now he let Óin pull him again through the stream of people still rushing from the hall, eyes closed, wishing for it all to be a dream.

-

Gimli had begged, but the invitation that Nori whispered didn’t include him, and Glóin couldn’t have been gladder of it. Thorin’s Company, their spouses, and the royal guards packed Dáin’s best room from the carpeted floor to the carved moldings of the vaulted ceiling, with nary a chair to spare, and his head was like to pop from the chatter. “I know ‘em!” Nori insisted. “Just need to get a look at their faces up close. Swear those’re the scum out of the Blue Mountains if they’re anyone at all –“

“And get yourself killed in the process!” Dori cut in. “ _No_ , Nori, I won’t lose you –“ 

“I’m spymaster!” Nori wrenched his arm from Dori’s hold. “And bereaved, but a fusspot arselicker like you wouldn’t understand nothin’ about that, would you? Think I can’t handle it?” 

Glóin’s wife adjusted her skirts, stood up from the upholstered stone bench where she’d passed the last quarter hour or so in silence, and clapped her hands together. “Nori,” she said loudly, “yer not what we need.” She tucked an escaping curl of beard back into its braid. “This isn’t the sort o’thing that subtlety will fix. It needs hammerin’ oot in public. Dáin shouldn’t’ve gone –“ 

“Dáin would have died!” said the biggest of Dáin’s guards. 

“I would not have died,” Dáin said, quiet but audible. His crown lay on the table before him and his head bowed toward it, face tight as though the slightest relaxation would cause it to crumble. “Sima Dimul, I know ye mean your words kindly, but that’s not what’s called for, either. I can’t let it get about that I’m iron-fisted.” 

Óin shoved his ear horn deep into his left ear. “They’re already _callin’_ you Ironfoot,” he said. “What’s the worry there?” 

Glóin caught his arm and, when Óin looked at him, signed at him in Iglishmêk. _Ironfisted, not foot_ , he corrected. _Dáin can’t come off as a king who takes no prisoners this early on._

“Oh,” Óin said. “Aye, I see.” 

“ _Khazad ai-menu!_ ” Bifur cried out. Glóin snapped around and looked at him, catching the eye of every warrior in the room doing the same as he shifted his gaze. Bifur had his hands up – no, one hand up, the other against the newly-healed scar where an Orc had ripped his axe from his skull, as if it pained him. “ _We are loyal Dwarves_ ,” he continued in Khuzdul. “ _Will we let pretenders run rampant in this mountain, Dáin? Set your own guards on them at least. Restrict their movements._ ” His mouth opened and, briefly, an ugly rasp came out before he continued in the Westron that his mind seemed powerless in its choice to speak in since the battle. “Don’t...give them freedom.” 

“It’s not as simple as all that,” said Dáin with a heavy sigh, and finally stood from his chair. Weariness filled his face in its lines and the dark circles under his eyes. Glóin had known, of course, that Dáin was overtaxed in the fortnight or so since Dwalin’s murder, but he supposed he hadn’t thought about how his king must need a good sleep. “How many in Erebor have seen the princes up close? There’s some never knew Fíli and Kíli were alive, or ever saw ‘em if they knew.” 

That made no sense. So many of the Dwarves still coming into Erebor had been born in the Blue Mountains, or had lived there long enough after exile from Erebor to be acquainted with the princes firsthand. Erebor’s refugees had been many, but compared to the population of a true city, they were piddling. Glóin couldn’t think of a Dwarf in Ered Luin he hadn’t at least heard of, if not met and known for years. “Half the people living here would surely recognize the real Fíli and Kíli,” said Balin, as if he’d read Glóin’s thoughts. “I would recommend a council.” 

“I know how I’m viewed,” Dáin countered. “We’d see willful ignorance in some. Durin’s beard, don’t you all think I’d love to see Fíli and Kíli alive again? If someone else were the king, I might turn to the belief that they were real myself.” He sat back down and then, head in his hands, softly said the words that revealed why only their Company was present. “I never wanted this.” 

Glóin would have taken him in his arms if he could and rocked him back and forth like he still did to Gimli when he was sad, king or no king. Bombur was the one to speak up, though. “Council might be the best idea,” he said, “but Dáin, why couldn’t ye tell those two to present themselves publicly? Question them. You could do it in the council if y’wanted, even. Question the ones who brought ‘em here, too.” 

“It’s subtlety he’s after,” Nori countered. “He already said they’d call him Ironfist. Banishing those two or questioning them, people’ll think he’s got something to hide either way. Might be they’ll be more convinced those two are real.” 

Fine words from someone who had harangued Dáin to allow him to murder whoever had killed his One. Dáin’s guards hadn’t talked, but the walls had ears. Still, Glóin supposed that allowances had to be made for grief. Nori hadn’t been himself. If someone even dared to lay hands on Sima or Gimli, he suspected he’d go on a rampage himself. 

“Could be the best thing to do is _request_ to see them,” suggested Bombur’s wife, though her voice was hesitant. She clasped her hands and held them in her lap, which Glóin could see was nearly as round as her husband’s, even through her skirts. “But…would it look like you’ve not got any power, then?” 

Dáin pursed his lips. “Exactly. But it’s not a bad idea.” He began to nod, first slowly and then faster, in a rhythm. “Call a council meeting and invite them.” He stood up and started pacing from one end of the packed room to another; Dwarves fell back to give him room. Glóin felt his brother’s elbow bump into his ribs, and grunted softly to let him know. “Call a council. Best have the Iron Hills representatives and Ered Luin both. Balin, have we got chambers laid out for these…honored guests?” 

“Easily arranged,” said Balin, “and soon.” He sat up a bit straighter and his dark eyes brightened, only for a moment, but the first hint of intrigue Glóin had seen in him since Dwalin’s death. “It will have to be close to the noble quarters, if not within them. Wouldn’t do to be seen insulting one’s honored relatives, not at all.” 

What in Mahal’s name did Nori think of all this, anyhow? Glóin turned around in his spot – surely Nori was boiling with anger at the thought of placating _anyone_ , especially people he thought were connected to the death of his betrothed – but he was nowhere to be found. “Where’s Nori?” he asked Óin in an undertone. 

“Eh? Nori?” Óin knit his bushy brows. “Must’ve slipped out, wee weasel. Dáin!” 

Dáin stopped in the middle of whatever he was saying to Balin, and mid-step. “Yes, Óin?” 

Glóin’s brother adjusted the position of his ear horn. “Nori’s gone somewhere!” 

Dáin dropped his face into his hands. “O’course he has,” he said. “Right, the meeting’s adjourned. Find that troublemaker. Bombur, can yer brother do it?” 

Bombur’s round face, far from its usual placidity, looked troubled at the question. It was a simple one, wasn’t it? “He’s not able to do nowt right now,” he said softly. “Dáin, he’s not been sober a minute since Thorin and the lads died. ‘Specially not after Dwalin.” 

Bofur drunk and Dwalin dead and Nori gone Mahal only knew where, and Glóin had his doubts about how useful Balin could be in this situation. Unless he were truly made of stone, no Dwarf could function properly when his brother’s head had been caved in in a manner that was clearly no accident. Their Company was falling apart. “That’d be why he’s not here, then,” Glóin said. 

“Aye, no,” said Bombur. “Sleeping it off.” 

“Then we’ll meet again when he’s found,” Dáin said. “Thank you all for comin’. There’s ale, if anyone’s after a drink.” 

A drink would only serve as a bandage, and the blood of their torn Company would seep through soon enough. Glóin would still take it.

_

Nothing in his life had ever come to him by instinct, but Nori had learned well enough how to spy, how to follow, how to take clues from a print in the dust or a scent on the air. Dori couldn’t do that if he tried, and neither could Mam, not that she cared about much. Now, with his fingertips following warm trails where other fingers rested just a heartbeat ago – couldn’t be more than the length of time it took him to walk here, not with how poorly this stone held heat – the same pride that his brothers said they felt for their crafts welled up deep within his belly. If it was the last thing he did, he’d find out where these wankers came from.

He tapped the callused tips of his fingers against the stone and listened for an echo. Hardly any at all and it dissipated quickly, which meant that he’d have to go by touch, not lingering sound, for an indication of where the buggers had gone. Nori gritted his teeth and pressed on, back against the rough wall, feeling the embedded gems in a line at waist height scrape him bump by bump. Those crafty sons of wargs were _moving_ their false princes, that was what they were doing. He could have sworn he’d sniffed them out in a closed room in the guild corridor, but as soon as he’d worked through the lock, out they’d gone through some secret door. 

_Insider_ , he mouthed (wouldn’t do for someone to hear him). The only ones who knew the secret passages of Erebor better than Nori, after a year of living here, had been born and bred beneath the mountain. And that meant that the false Fíli and Kíli had help from within. 

They had to be the same people who had bashed Dwalin to death, and if it was the last thing he did, he would find them and drive a shard of rusty iron through every one of their murderous black hearts. This time, he wouldn’t be killing in a shameful, secret way, not like he’d killed Orcs and Goblins when even his own brother wouldn’t have him because of his _disgusting_ occupation. It would be righteous, and right, and their blood on his hands would avenge his Dwalin in the Halls of Mahal. 

All he knew was that if he were Bilbo Baggins, he wouldn’t have buggered off with some mealy-mouthed reminder about tea. He wouldn’t have rested until every Orc that had even thought of helping Azog was hunted down and dead. 

“Help me,” Nori whispered to the stone. He had to hurry; the warmth of those fingers was fading with every step. This particular twisty corridor ended with a steep drop to the anterooms where ore was stored for the forges, and even he could get lost in the shadowy stacks of metal when the forges burned low…

A rush of air, a fast curse in Khuzdul, and then a fist swung into the back of his head from below before he had time to turn around. Nori yelped and staggered into the wall, which came up to meet his nose with a head-filling _krnch_. At once, on instinct, he swung out with one foot and swept it around for legs, and it met a mark in the weight of Dwarf that fell on top of him. 

“Stone bastard!” his attacker growled. His fists met Nori’s eyes and his battered nose; sharp pain spiked through his head and the ceiling wheeled above him over and over as the Dwarf hit his face back, back, _back_. 

“ _No_ ,” Nori tried to howl, but his voice came out in a shriek even he couldn’t understand. Dagger, where was his dagger? His fingers slipped on the closest hilt in his belt and he brought it up, pulled his arm in, and jabbed. 

The blade slipped through flesh, then scraped down hard bone. _Rib_. Nori’s arm trembled and tingled from the shock; the dagger dropped away, and distantly, he heard it ring as it bounced onto the floor. The Dwarf had stopped punching, but Nori’s vision still pulsed black and red with every heartbeat and he was choking from the blood that poured from his nose into his mouth and throat. Still, he pushed himself up with a flat hand on the wall and threw his body into the Dwarf’s with all of his might. 

Arms immediately clamped around his chest and began to squeeze. His ribs were cracking inside him – his chest was on fire - _I’m not going to survive this_. The thought drifted into his head with a clarity that forced tears out of his swelling eyes. Dwalin had been first and now it was his turn, all for the sake of some opportunists and their – 

The arms were gone. He fell to the floor and the back of his head struck the stone. Gagging, coughing, he spat out blood and rolled over onto his side. Fast words in Khuzdul, a grunt, and then two sets of running footsteps vanished down the hall. 

Nori lay on the floor, his breath coming in heaves. Slowly, he drew himself up to curl around his stomach. _Don’t vomit. Not here_. What had they said? Why hadn’t he died? _The other – something about the other…_ Fuck Dori to the cruelest of hells for not getting him lessons in the Old Tongue. What was it? 

_The other will die_. 

“Fuck,” he said, coughed, and saw a few drops of blood spatter the floor beneath his head. The other. Who? Dwalin was dead and he’d been closer to the Line of Durin than anyone, save, oh, by Mahal and all the other Elf-loving Valar, too. _Balin_. 

Balin would die. If Nori didn’t do something now, he would be dead by the time anyone thought to check on him. 

He stood. Though every piece of him burned or ached or hurt, he lurched to his feet, vomited on the floor ( _shite_ ), and stumbled to a piece of wall that opened when he smacked his side against it. _Balin is next. He’s good as dead_. 

In and in the tiny passage spiraled until Nori had to drop to his hands and knees and crawl. Just a bit farther and he would be under the noblest adviser’s quarters, and all he would have to do was crawl through the trapdoor, _Mahal_ , there went the rest of his breakfast. He felt like a worm, moving forward nearly on his belly and almost as blind in the dark. 

The seam of the trapdoor appeared under his searching hand. He threw it open and pulled his broken self through the tiny space and onto a carpet, rough beneath his torn cheek. “Balin,” he croaked as loudly as he could. It wasn’t very loudly. 

A similar croak answered him. Nori lifted his head. There sat Balin in the nearest chair, slumped, with both hands clutching the padded stone arms until the knuckles went white. But no, it couldn’t be Balin. Instead of white, the bushy beard was splotched a thick, bright blood red. “Nori,” Balin gurgled, and more blood poured from his mouth into the mess on his chin and chest. “M’b- _brother_ …” 

“Dead,” Nori said. He heaved himself to his feet and, somehow, walked to Balin’s side. The whites of his eyes had gone a spotted red, too, with burst vessels. He could barely see the brown among all the blood and the enormous black pupils. “Balin, gettin’ help.” He coughed, and swallowed whatever he brought up. “’S’poison.” 

Somehow, Balin had the strength to lift his hand and clamp it down on Nori’s where it rested on the chair’s arm. “No.” The word came out ragged, as though his entire throat was as cut-up as Nori knew his own face had to be. “You. You were – you are – you’re…my _brother_. Dwalin loved you.” 

“Balin, stop,” Nori said. “ _Balin!_ ” Though Balin’s chest rose and fell, his eyelids drooped and there was no response. _The other will die_. 

Not while Nori had anything to fucking say about it. 

He leaned against the wall, his palms leaving red smears, and began to move as fast as he could for whatever help he could find.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Nadadê_ : little brother (Khuzdul)  
>  _Iglishmêk_ : the signed Dwarvish language, used by Bifur in the Hobbit movies. 
> 
> Poor Nori. Unfortunately for him, purveyors of knowledge tend to be the first ones that people try to take out. 
> 
> The poison that was used on Balin is fictional, but I based it on substances that have known effects in the body. Anyone who wants to know can have an explanation. :) 
> 
> As always, I love and cherish all feedback, and I'm at godihatethisfreakingcat on Tumblr. And unfortunately, I have no idea how to change the fact that the end notes for the first chapter seem to be showing up in the second.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some questions are asked, but not answered, while others provide answers without being asked. Óin and Bifur can see more of those truths than many.

“Tell me your name.” 

They’d dressed the blond would-be prince in beautiful red and blue clothing, things that the real Fíli would certainly have worn if he had lived. It was an outrage that they’d even found them, much less used them, but there was nothing Bifur could say while Hefti, Nithi, and their lads were questioned. “Fíli, son of Víli, son of Níli,” said the Dwarf, “also son of Dis of the line of Durin, nephew to Thorin, King Under the Mountain at his death.” 

_He knows the words_ , Bifur signed to Dáin, who glanced at his hands and nodded. These Dwarves of Ered Luin, Nori had assured them when he was able to do more than first lie in bed and then creep about, weren’t likely to understand _Iglishmêk_. 

“Where were you born?” Ginnar demanded. His voice boomed throughout the throne room from where he stood on the steps to the throne itself. A noble formerly of the Iron Hills, he was the only Dwarf of import whom Hefti and Nithi had deemed impartial enough to conduct their investigation. _Damn_ them. Bifur knew well why he himself had been chosen to watch, too, though they framed it as an honor: his speech was as yet too unreliable to count as true testimony, especially in public. 

“Just outside the borders of Gabilgathol,” said the blond Dwarf, “at the end of the Wandering Times.” Not Fíli, never Fíli. Bifur would not honor him with that name even in his thoughts. False Fíli, perhaps, no matter how many answers he got right. Bifur had seen the bodies of his princes on the field and seen them lain to rest in stone, and from head to toe, these two were completely different. 

Yet they were strong, and they had amassed support, so now every Dwarf who had truly known Thorin on his quest was liable to lose their life if they stepped around one darkened corner too many. Who could be trusted now? So many of the people of Erebor believed these falsehoods – so many hate-filled eyes stared at Bifur wherever he went. 

He and Bombur had to keep Bofur home now for fear that he would wander into some trap, and his poor cousin had lain in bed for days, wailing and thrashing as the drink left his body. Bombur would not leave Hrona’s side, or those of their four children already born and the one Hrona carried. 

Balin – 

Mahal’s hands had guided Óin to nearly make Balin anew; Bifur could see no other explanation for it. When Dori brought Balin toÓ in’s quarters slung over his back, Óin took one look at the blood pouring from his mouth and quickly (miraculously) opened Balin’s throat with a smooth tube of forged iron, then plunged a long, thin piece of metal down against the flesh, still hot from the fire. 

Balin choked and gagged, but Óin and Dori held him steady, and the bleeding stopped. Then the elderly Dwarf began to shake all over, and collapsed to the floor; though Óin said that he still breathed and that the worst danger had passed, he had not yet woken. 

“Now,” said Ginnar, “tell me the ancestors who gave you your claim to the throne. Spare no details.” 

Bifur thought he saw the false Fíli take a breath, as if afraid, but that could have been the torchlight searing his eyes. He shaded them with his hand and gritted his teeth against the dull throb in his forehead. Where the axe had rested, the headaches still came. 

“My uncle was King Thorin,” said the false prince, “who reigned only in this past year in Erebor itself, but he truly reigned after his father disappeared…” 

The words wavered in and out in Bifur’s ears. His hands trembled with the desire to clap them against the sides of his head and drown out the noise. Soon, he knew, the pain would burst in his head and he wouldn’t be able to stand the light. _I’m unwell_ , he said shakily to Dáin. 

_Your head?_ Dáin signed. At first look, he still appeared to be gazing down at the proceedings below, the picture of royal sternness; Bifur suspected that only he had seen the way Dáin’s eyes darted to his hands, quick as a flame. 

_Yes_. Yes, yes, yes, his head was fit to burst. He looked through his watering eyes to the false Fíli, who was now confidently naming the years of the first Glóin’s reign with his equally-false brother standing behind him. For all the world, the two of them _looked_ like Fíli and Kíli, but they were not. He would know it, even had he not seen Fíli and Kíli’s bodies on the ice of Ravenhill. One didn’t spend months nearly on top of thirteen other people (fourteen, when the wizard joined them) without learning their every detail. 

He ground his palms into his forehead and did his best to hide his grimace. It didn’t work. The word came rushing out anyway, as if it would soothe his headache by being spoken. “ _Shazara!_ ” 

The blond Dwarf stopped mid-word and looked at him, confused, but Hefti and Nithi glared at him. “Are you telling the rightful prince of Erebor to quiet himself, Bifur Binurul?” Nithi asked. His tone was low, hissing, dangerous; somehow, Bifur didn’t think he truly expect an answer. “Your rightful king?” 

Prince to king. It was a small slip that anyone might make, but nevertheless, it was a slip. It was something that Bifur could tell Nori later in Iglishmêk so coded that not even those who were fluent in Iglishmêk could recognize it. “My head,” he said in slow Westron. Today, nothing came fluently – Khuzdul, Westron, or any other spoken tongue. “It…hurts.” 

“Bifur Binurul has suffered from severe headaches since he first took the axe wound to his head,” Dáin interjected. He stood and moved to Bifur’s side, laying a firm hand on his shoulder. “I assure you, he meant no insult. He is one of my most honest and trustworthy advisers.” 

“So you’ve said,” Hefti spat. “How am I to trust him, or you? For all I know, he’ll be running off to your spymaster the moment you take your hand off his _lead_.” 

Bifur set his mouth firmly and ignored the insult. He was no dog to be dragged about Mannish towns, nor was he a warg, bound to some Orc with evil in his heart. “Only my head,” he said, “nothing more. I –“ The request to leave and lie down in his bed stopped short before it could leave his lips. If he were to leave now, who knew what he might miss? Hefti was right about one thing, and that was that Nori would hear about all that had transpired today. 

“None of us can trust him if he’ll go to a Dwarf who got himself beaten,” said Hefti. It was as though Bifur wasn’t even there; he looked straight at Dáin, the accusation on his face visible halfway across the throne room. Bifur made the mistake of looking down at the golden floor, and suddenly, his headache tripled in magnitude. “This is why we didn’t want to have you here, Dáin. Either of you.” 

Anger suddenly overrode pain. “ _You call him ‘Your Grace,’_ ” Bifur shouted in Khuzdul. The echo of his own voice _bong_ ed back into his ears. “ _Show respect to your king_.” They would never be able to prove that their puppet princes were real – for addled or not, Bifur understood a power play to be the hands pulling the strings well enough – and until someone decided to end this ridiculousness, he wouldn’t stand for rudeness. 

Now it was Nithi who spoke up with a sneer. “The true king is standing right –“ 

“Enough,” Dáin said. He didn’t need to shout for Nithi to fall silent. “ _This has finished_ ,” he said, a phrase in Khuzdul that Bifur recognized. Prayers to Mahal ended with it, to show the Vala who had created the Dwarves that they respected him enough to not just walk away. “ _We will resume this questioning tomorrow_ ,” Dáin continued, still in the Old Tongue. The false Fíli’s head tilted, almost imperceptibly, to one side. “ _Bifur needs rest, and I won’t have this continue without him._ ” 

“Fine,” said Hefti. “Tomorrow at the same time. And in the meantime, King Fíli would like to join his cousin, Lord Dáin, in today’s meeting with the Stiffbeard delegation.” 

How had they known that? Bifur himself had only learned it from Nori. Dáin seemed to be thinking the same thing, for a deep frown creased his forehead. “My cousins have less experience than I do,” he said. One had to admire his fortitude. In his position, Bifur thought he would have screamed in their faces about what they could do with the shades of two dead princes. “If we verify their identities, I will let them know all the information I have about their kingdom.” 

_Masterfully done_ , Bifur thought. There was nothing that Hefti or Nithi could do to argue that, really, when Dáin had insinuated that he would give up his seat if the two false princes were lawfully proven to be the king and heir apparent of Erebor. 

Sure enough, Hefti and Nithi would have had Dáin dead on the floor if looks could kill, but they only grunted. “Then that’s settled,” said Dáin, and if there was a note of pride in his voice, well, Bifur would say he had a perfect right to it. “Vit, Dyr, please escort these fine Dwarves to their quarters.” 

“We…we don’t need that.” Oho, what was this? Bifur didn’t think he’d ever heard this Kíli imitator speak up before. Yet there he was, crossing from the side to the front of the room, head up towards Dáin. “This is our home. We haven’t been here before, but…but our uncle and our ‘Amad told us about what it’s like.” 

This one had some mettle to him, and he’d clearly learned from whatever lessons his masters gave him. Bifur’s heart sank even as he nodded in unwilling admiration. If the false Kíli could present himself in such a charismatic way in front of the kingdom, then their position would be all the harder. He certainly looked like Kíli, down to the weak stubble of his beard; that had to be shaven, of course. Few Dwarves of Kíli’s age had beards like his.

Dáin opened his mouth, then paused. “Very well,” he said. “Vit, please follow a distance behind them to direct them if they should be lost.” 

“All right,” Nithi finally said through a mouthful of grinding teeth. Silently, Dáin’s guard Vit came from behind the throne to join the four Dwarves, and they left in a knot of five. It seemed Vit wouldn’t begin to trail behind until he absolutely had to. 

“Come with me,” Dáin told Bifur when they had gone, and gestured at Ginnar, too. “Dyr, will you take us all to our quarters?” He raised an eyebrow and added in fast Iglishmêk, _I don’t trust these sons of wargs not to send someone after Bifur, too._

_That’s a good way to put it_ , Bifur replied. Dáin actually smiled at that, if one could call it a smile when one side of his mouth quirked up and his eyes creased at the corners. It was far more of a smile than the somber expression he’d worn ever since these people came to plague him. 

“Ginnar,” Dáin said, “I apologize for the interruptions. If you would come again tomorrow to continue the questioning, I would be very grateful.” 

Ginnar nodded and said nothing, but inclined his head toward Dáin with an expression that said very loudly what he thought of all this pretense. Yes, he was neutral, but it seemed that in a bind, he would likely not defect. 

They were all silent on the way to their quarters, devoid of the ability to speak in Iglishmêk in the dark hallways and too aware of the fact that anyone could be watching. Bifur, personally, didn’t trust the secret passageways anymore. Whoever had welcomed Hefti, Nithi, and the false princes into Erebor and done the dirty work of slaying Dwalin beforehand undoubtedly knew where all the passages led. Unfortunately – probably, Bifur reflected, because the royal family needed an unseen series of safe pathways to their home if an emergency should occur – many ended at the royal quarters. And as even an infant Dwarfling might be able to tell, a passage ran both ways. 

“Until tomorrow,” Dáin said quietly when they stopped at Bifur’s door. “Will you be well enough, Bifur?” 

“ _Yes_.” He would make himself well enough, whatever it took. 

“Good.” He took Bifur by the shoulders. “ _Gamut manan ai-mênu_. And thank you.” 

_No consequence_ , Bifur signed. It was so exhausting to speak. 

He searched for his key after the king and his retinue had left, but his hands shook too badly to grasp it. He pounded on the door instead, and softly greeted Hrona when she answered it, hands floury. “You’re not disturbing anything,” she said, apparently reading his expression. “The bread needs to rise. Come in, come in.” 

Bifur gladly took her offer, and touched her forehead to his in gratitude when she had shut and bolted the door behind them. The quarters smelled of flour and yeast; it would smell of bread within a few hours, then, a smell that always eased his headaches. The loaves that Hrona made were squatter and more symmetrical than the bread shared at communal feasts here, apparently made with flour traded from Far Harad. Bombur, always eager to try a new recipe when his duties in designing the renovations of Erebor allowed him, dove eagerly into all styles. 

“Will you want a bath?” Hrona asked. “I can heat a cauldron of water for you.” 

“No, I will sleep,” said Bifur. “Thank you. My…” The words were slipping from him again. “My…chamber. I’m going there.” 

She bent over and touched her belly, which would continue to swell for another half a year before her and Bombur’s fifth child was born. Little Hrofur, who had been born just before Thorin’s Company set out from Ered Luin, was likely sleeping in the stone cradle that Bifur had carved for him. “All right. I’m tired, too.” 

He turned from her to make his way to his bedchamber, where he could hide his throbbing head beneath a heavy pillow, and heard her say “Bifur? You won’t be alone.” 

“Hm.” Of course. “Who?” 

“You already know,” Hrona said, and, sighing, Bifur continued his journey. It looked like there would be no rest for him. 

Nori, sure enough, already lay upon the bed when Bifur opened the door. His broken nose, though set, was still bruised and swollen, and similar bruises ringed his eyes with purple shadows. “Bif,” he said, and sat up as slowly as a Dwarf on their deathbed. He could have aged forty years for the new lines on his face, the strands of gray in his beard, his haunted dark eyes. “What’ve you got for me?” 

“ _Stop showing up uninvited_ ,” Bifur said in Khuzdul. “ _I’m starting one of the headaches. It broke up the questioning session._ ” 

Unasked, Nori moved off Bifur’s bed – a small mercy – and lowered himself, wincing and clutching his stomach, onto the stone stool by the table where he kept his carving tools. Bifur immediately fell face-first onto the pillow, and though the impact jarred his head, the darkness immediately soothed its ache. “Well, tell,” Nori said. “I won’t be here long.” 

“ _The false Kíli has a good presence_ ,” Bifur said. “ _That will make it much more difficult to prove that he isn’t real. Is there any…progress? What do you know?_ ” Now Khuzdul was failing him, too. He would be altogether voiceless soon if Nori didn’t leave. 

“Can’t follow them,” Nori said. “Can’t find who did this to me, either. Should’ve left some bloody marks on ‘em, ones clothes can’t hide. Someone keeps helping these buggers find new quarters every time I turn around.” 

The pounding in Bifur’s head was that of a drum. “ _One thing_ ,” he said. “ _One. Then…leave. Please._ ” 

“Awright, awright,” said Nori. “What is it?” 

Bifur gulped in a breath. The cool air helped. “The boys,” he said; the words came out in Westron. “We spoke in Khuzdul. They…” He lost his thought for a moment, but then it returned. “They did not understand.”

_

“Let me examine them,” said Óin. “Those lads were my own blood. I couldn’t know them better if I birthed ‘em myself.”

“ _No!_ ” Nithi’s fist hit the table and Óin’s heart fell. Of course they would say no, but he hadn’t asked himself yet. Surely it would be worth a try, he’d thought. He was a damned fool. “Who can trust you not to falsify results? Would you even understand what you’re looking at? You’re an old Dwarf, Óin Gróinul. Your time is past.” 

Óin fell back in his chair. “As if yer even trustworthy, at that!” he snarled. 

“ _Óin_.” Dáin held up his hand. “We will be civil here. Ginnar is meant to ask the questions, not you.” 

Here, pah. ‘Here’ was the smallest, meanest council chamber still worthy to be called so, likely chosen so Óin wouldn’t have to shout – he did appreciate that. What he didn’t appreciate was these wretches thinking they had the right to insult him. He had done all he could to keep every Dwarf possible alive, and what had they done? They’d come marching in from the west with falsehoods on their lips and false kings trailing behind them. “Civil,” he said. “Aye.” 

“If you know what that means,” said Hefti. Beside him, the false Fíli’s cheeks flamed, and he looked down at the table. Perhaps he wasn’t such a monster as his presenters if he could find their behavior embarrassing. 

Nevertheless, Óin wouldn’t stand for it. “I won’t hear that from someone who didnae even make sure their fakes understood Khuzdul!” 

The noise at the table – Bifur’s mutterings, Nithi’s quiet, venomous noises – suddenly ceased. Óin saw Bifur grow pale. Mahal _dammit_ , of course the information had come from him. He closed his eyes and prayed that he hadn’t just signed Bifur’s death sentence. “Is this true?” Dáin asked, addressing the false princes. “Have you two got no knowledge of Khuzdul?” His shock was apparent in the strength of his accent. 

“Please, Cousin – your Grace, I mean,” said the false Kíli. What a slip of the tongue to make. Were he not so sure that it was an affectation, Óin would have admired the outburst. “My brother and I had no opportunity to learn. Uncle Thorin and our parents wanted to, but…” He shook his head. “They needed to help us survive first.” 

What cheek those two had. Thorin had spent evenings when he should have been in bed, sore and smeared with soot and dirt as he was, teaching his nephews to read and write in the Old Tongue by candlelight. He had spoken with them in Khuzdul at every opportunity when there were no Mannish about to hear, and so had Dis, giving them a fine education in the inflections of Erebor. “And what have you to say for yerself?” Ó in asked the false Fíli, who still hadn’t looked up to meet any of their eyes. “Will ye tell the truth?” 

“My brother does speak true,” the wretch said into the table. “We had no time to learn. I’m ashamed that we make such poor princes, Cousin.” 

Then they had the audacity to call him their cousin as well. Óin bit down on his tongue, the only way he knew he could hold it in a situation like this. “You see?” said Hefti, arms crossed, his face a portrait in smugness. “King Fíli and Prince Kíli had no time to learn their own ancestral tongue. I’m sure none in your _Company_ would recall them speaking it, not even the ones they were closest to.” 

_Only because you’ve killed them!_ Or tried. Lofar’s lass, the one apprenticed to him as a healer, was watching Balin while Óin sat in on this farce of a questioning. Óin’s fingers itched to feel his patient’s wrists for their weak pulse, touch his forehead for anything besides the clamminess his skin had exhibited for days, peel back his eyelids to see if his pupils had grown from pinpoints. He had seen this before, yes, but only in those children – Mannish and Dwarvish alike – whose headaches turned fulminant, and few of those survived. “Lies, lies!” he growled. “Ye won’t let me examine these lads because they’re not who they say they are. I’m their cousin, aye, I am, and I knew ‘em from their birth!” 

“Oh, so you’ll know every mark, then?” Nithi said. A smirk curled his damnable lying lips. “When was the last time you saw their bodies? We have it on good authority that no one took the time to look at every mark during your quest.” 

Those two would claim that Fíli and Kíli had told him so, but the list of names in Óin’s mind - _who would feed them information, who would they send to kill Dwalin, who did any of them even trust after the battle_ \- suddenly shortened so that he could almost hear the snap. There was no chance that Bilbo Baggins had told anyone about what went on during those congenial baths; he’d left Erebor too quickly. Bofur might have said something, and there were only a few Dwarves he spoke to these days. Or…Mahal, no, not Lofar’s daughter, surely. No, Óin knew he’d not said a thing to her on the subject. The wound was still too raw. 

“Would you swear that you knew their marks?” Ginnar asked. 

Dáin nodded. “Aye, Fíli and Kíli had scars,” he said, “visible ones. Bring in the whole Company for questionin’ – we’ll get to the bottom of this.” 

“They’d have no incentive to tell the truth, neither,” said Nithi heatedly. ‘Neither’ – that was a word of Ered Luin, placed where it was. Nori would know what that meant. “What of the bodies you placed in stone? Take them out, if they even exist, and we’ll compare truth to lies!” 

Ginnar, for all that his position was that of a questioner without bias (never mind what Bifur had said about his expressions), fell back, nearly shaking with shock. Save for the false group, every Dwarf in the room looked just the same. “Take them from _stone?_ ” Óin repeated in horror, twiddling his ear horn. He had to be mistaken. No one would demand that sort of sacrilege. “You don’t know what yer sayin’. We laid their bodies in –“ 

“You’d say that, wouldn’t you?” Hefti interjected. “Or are those tombs empty? I wouldn’t put it past you. Any of you!” He rose and pointed at them in turn, save Ginnar: first Bifur, then Óin, then Dáin, most accusingly of all. “I’ve listened to your excuses long enough, Dáin Náinul. You hide behind customs to conceal the fact that your cousins are not dead!” 

By Durin. There was no escape, Óin realized. No proof would placate them. Should they commit the greatest sin of all against Mahal and unearth their princes from their final resting place, he couldn’t imagine how many outraged Dwarves would cleave from Dáin’s side. But should they remain in the Smith’s favor…well, Hefti was already exploiting that. “Will you say we shoved in a couple of imposters, then, if we open up those tombs?” he demanded. “They’ll not look like themselves anymore, ye know it damn well. There won’t be a mark left to distinguish ‘em!” 

“We’ll not hear your lies,” said Nithi. Outrage filled Óin at his equally-outraged tone – faked, by Mahal’s beard. Faked, after he and his filthy comrade-in-arms had suggested digging out those poor lads for a farcical trial. “Dáin, your corruption –“ 

The door flew open before Óin could fill Nithi’s ears with what he thought of this trumped-up corruption. “Throne room!” gasped the Dwarfling, panting and clutching his side. Óin recognized him as the oldest of Bombur’s four; Hrofur, maybe, or Hrobur. “Sorry, sorry, but King Dáin, we’ve got to go to the throne room!” 

“Why, lad?” Dáin asked. “Is Glóin hurt?” 

_Glóin_ was sitting the throne in Dáin’s place? Fuck it all, he’d not told him. Óin’s hands clenched into fists. If his brother was the latest Dwarf to be hurt in this evil scheme, that would be the end of him. He would not live while Glóin didn’t. 

“No.” The lad coughed and clutched his side. “They sent me. They found ‘em, the one what did it.” 

Dáin leaned across the table with his brow furrowed. “The one who did what?” 

“The dreadful thing, Your Grace,” said the Dwarfling. “The one who poisoned Master Balin.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Gamut manan ai-mênu_ : good day to you (Khuzdul)  
>  _Gabilgathol_ : the original Khuzdul name for Belegost. 
> 
> If you want to yell at me, I can be found at godihatethisfreakingcat on Tumblr. However, I live for all forms of feedback.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A burst of unexpected bravery on Ori's part during a difficult interview brings up information that may mean life or death.

Never in his seventy-eight years had Ori seen an Elf so aged, but then, no one had. Elves were always young; everyone knew that. The ones in Rivendell and Mirkwood had looked like nothing from this world, thousands of years old and frightening, the way they stared at you like they knew everything you’d done and didn’t know if they approved. He had filled page upon page with drawings of their faces and they’d never quite come out right. 

But this Elf…if he tried to draw her, he didn’t know what his hand would do on the page. Her fall of lank hair, deeply-seamed face, and clouded eyes almost defied her race, and going by the mutters and gasps of everyone in the throne room, they found her just as horrifying as Ori did. This was _unnatural_ , the way she looked, and it was such a change from her former strength that he could hardly stand to look at her. 

“Please!” Tauriel cried, sinking to her knees in front of the throne. “They…they said it was for an Orc!” She buried her face in her hands and began to sob, the wracking sounds tearing from her frail body. As she bowed forward, her thin silver hair fell over her face and brushed against the floor like a veil. Ori could make out the shapes of her face and hands with the torchlight shining through it; she could have been a statue if she weren’t moving, someone forever frozen in grief. 

“You made this poison,” King Dáin said. He stood before his throne with one hand curled around his scepter and the other half-curled at his side, as if he wasn’t sure if he wanted it to be a fist or not. “You have admitted you made it. Are you claiming you had no intention of poisoning Balin son of Fundin?” 

In the silence that followed his question, the sound of Tauriel’s hair moving across the floor as she shook her head was as loud as a waterfall. “No,” she said. “The Dwarves came – they said it was…was for the Orc that –“ She let out another wrenching cry. “The Orc shot my Kíli! They wanted to poison him, they wanted revenge because Kíli would live if he hadn’t…hadn’t been so weakened.” She rocked back and forth between her knees and her heels. “I swear by all the Valar, I swear, an Orc!” 

Dáin inclined his head towards her with his formidable brows furrowed. “You meant to poison this Orc?” 

“They would bring it to him,” she whispered. “They said they knew where he lived. They would stab him for me to avenge Kíli, put it on their knives. It – it was wrong…but I had to.” 

Dáin beckoned with the curled fingers of one hand. “Rise, Tauriel of Mirkwood,” he said. “You do not need to kneel for me.” His words were stilted, full of discomfort. Even with Dwarves he didn’t know, he spoke easier than this. He’d been familiar with Ori from the very beginning, clapping him on both shoulders and calling him a good lad and offering him an apprenticeship to Master Balin. With others who came before him, he spoke kindly. But now, he could have been made of stone. 

Tauriel slowly got to her feet, pushing her palms against the smooth golden floor to boost herself upwards. In that moment, she reminded Ori of an animal uncurling, maybe one of Mr. Radagast’s hedgehogs. “King Thranduil removed me from my position,” she said. “I’m of no use anymore except to patrol outside the castle.” Her voice shook, and she wiped tears from her eyes with the backs of both hands. 

“Where were you when you were approached?” Dáin asked. 

“At the gates,” she said. “We had word from one of your ravens about a party of Dwarves approaching. They crossed over the bridge and two of them stayed back.” 

“What did they do?” 

This was the kind of questioning, Ori realized with some indignation, that should have been done from the beginning with Hefti and Nithi. He didn’t believe for one moment that the Dwarves they brought were really Fíli and Kíli, and as far as he was concerned, Dáin should have questioned them himself and that was that. They shouldn’t have special treatment just because they were Dwarves and Tauriel was an Elf. She was a good sort, anyway. 

Nori probably wouldn’t be creeping about with his face all swollen if this had gotten taken care of earlier, anyway. His brother didn’t even complain about Dori taking care of him anymore, only about how he wished he had left a mark on whoever attacked him instead of just using his fists. At least he’d fought; that was something, and it showed how brave he was for Dwalin’s memory. 

“They asked me if I was Tauriel,” Tauriel answered, and ran a hand through her hair. “I do not know how they knew me. I’ve…changed.” Now she tugged at her hair with both hands. “But I still had some red left then – I’ll Fade soon…” She bent at the waist and, so briefly that Ori wondered if he was seeing things, trembled all over. “Then they told me what they wanted to do.” 

Dáin frowned down at her. “And you agreed.” 

“My Kíli is dead,” she whispered. Her voice was a thread. “I’m Fading without him. Wouldn’t you…” She gazed up at him pleadingly. “Wouldn’t you kill someone who killed your One?” 

Nori had tried that. It didn’t go too well for him, but no matter how much Ori begged, Nori wouldn’t say he’d stop. He just kept limping from Bifur’s quarters to the infirmary to Dáin’s chambers and back again, skulking around in the secret passages like the feral cat Dori compared him to. Was Ori going to lose his brother as well as his future goodbrother? Dori never gave him a straight answer, but oh, he was afraid. “Please continue,” said Dáin. “You are not here to be clapped in irons.” 

Tauriel drew in a long breath and shuddered it out. “I said I would,” she said. “I told them to meet me at moonrise the night after. King Thranduil doesn’t come to watch the Dwarves anymore when they come. They’re allowed to come and go now.” She dropped her eyes to the floor, and when she spoke again, the words came out flat. “I mixed the poison. They came for it and no one saw. It was done.” 

“You believed completely that they meant to poison an Orc?” 

She stood straighter now. “I knew no reason they would lie,” she said. “Kíli told me that Dwarves are close. Clannish, he said. Why should I have disbelieved them?” 

They’d called Ori a Stoneson when he was wee. Ori remembered how he’d come to Dori in floods of tears, only for Dori to hold him on his lap and explain in a brittle voice that he’d be hearing that all his life, ‘damn those Mannish.’ Other Dwarves had said that to him, and when he was a Dwarfling, he didn’t understand why it was such a bad thing to have a different father than his brothers did. But he still didn’t know of any Dwarf who would murder another – or he hadn’t, before this. 

“Do you remember which Dwarves did it?” Dáin asked. He shook his head and tried again. “Pardon. I meant to say, could you point out the Dwarves to whom you gave the poison?” 

Tauriel rose to her full height and pulled her hair away from her face. It fell in a single wave over one shoulder. “Them,” she said, and pointed at Hefti and Nithi. “I gave it to them.” 

They made outraged faces right away, but Ori’s eyes fell on the fake Fíli and Kíli, not Hefti and Nithi. Fíli (if only he were!) startled and half-hid behind Hefti, and Kíli only widened his eyes. Hefti and Nithi’s bristling almost immediately overshadowed them. “We did nothing like that!” Nithi protested. “The Elf lies! Our hands are clean of poison. Before today, we never saw her.” 

“But she hasn’t got a reason to lie,” Ori said, much louder than he’d meant. As he clapped his hands over his mouth, Dori tensed up beside him and the Dwarves in front parted to look back at him and stare. Oh, no, no, now _everyone_ was looking at him. “Sh-she…” 

“Louder, lad,” said Dáin. 

“If Kíli’s alive, it means her One isn’t dead,” Ori said, “but she’s Faded, so he has to be. I never saw an Elf who looks old before. I’ve read most of the books we’ve got about Elves, too.” None of the books had said anything clear about what an Elf in the process of Fading looked like, but the Dwarven scribes who had seen one wrote that it was terrifying. He had only seen a few things more terrifying than this. 

From the other side of the throne room, someone shouted “A glamour!”, which made Nithi puff out his chest. “Indeed,” he said, “Elves may cast glamours. What else explains their unnatural appeal to the Mannish?” 

“They don’t have that,” Ori said, and then cleared his throat so he’d stop squeaking. “They don’t have unnatural appeal. Everyone writes about their wars and how they’re k-kinslayers…sorry, Mistress Tauriel, not you. The others, like the house of Finwe.” He carefully pronounced the last word, all too conscious of when he’d first begun to learn the runes for the Old Tongue and accidentally written ‘copulate’ instead of ‘wild boar.’ “The histories show the evil things they did, a-as well as the good.” 

“But who’s to say she’s Faded?” Nithi challenged. “Your beloved Elrond hasn’t, has he? I heard that wife of his has passed. Went to Rivendell on our way, we did, and she wasn’t about.” 

_Wait_. Something familiar in his voice pinged a bell in Ori’s brain. _Went to Rivendell on our way, we did._ There was a lilt of his own accent in Nithi’s speech now, the lower-class kind that Dori had tried to stamp out of him when he was a Dwarfling (and still tried now). “You’re from Ered Luin!” he blurted out. “The – the…not the nobility. Like me.” They’d called him worse things, and people like him, but using polite terms got him cleaner looks. “Why would Fíli and Kíli have people bring them over who weren’t family?” 

Suddenly, everyone was talking again, and Ori just barely avoided covering his face with his hands. He wanted to sink into the floor and die there, laid in stone like the _real_ Fíli and Kíli. Shouts of ‘the lad’s telling the truth!’ and things like that overlaid opposing shouts about how much of a liar he was. There went any chance he had of ever becoming the court scribe, and he’d probably botched any chance of protecting the memories of poor Fíli and Kíli, too. “What d’ye expect out of a Stoneson?” came a voice, and Ori flinched. 

“I’m a Stoneson, but at least I’m telling the truth!” he said, half a yelp. “I’m not bringing in f-fake people and telling lies about Mistress Tauriel!” Suddenly, he realized with a shock that he had to have distracted from the actual reason that she was here: telling the truth about Kíli. And yet again, he’d mucked it up. “She’s _not_ using a glamour,” he insisted. “Kíli’s died, not gone to the Grey Havens. It’s just none of us has seen what a Faded Elf looks like. There aren’t many of them at all.” 

“Thank you, Master Ori,” said Tauriel, and suddenly her years of Fading fell away for a moment; she stood proud and tall, though the lines on her face and her shining hair – _like mithril_ , Ori thought, _the shirt Bilbo received_ \- remained. “I swear in the name of all that is good, I meant no harm to Balin, son of Fundin.” 

Dáin beckoned her closer, and she came. “I must ask,” he said. “Have you any proof that these Dwarves requested your poison?” 

Tauriel closed her eyes as her face furrowed into a deep frown. “That one,” she said, opening her eyes and pointing to Hefti, “had a shorter beard, and there was a cut beneath his chin.” 

It seemed as though the whole court stared at Hefti and Nithi, and then suddenly, someone standing behind Hefti yanked his head backwards and shoved a hand under his beard, groping. “A scab!” she shouted in an accent from the South. “There’s a scab under his beard!” 

Then Dáin’s guards appeared behind the four, Hefti and Nithi and their fake princes, and Ginnar the Record-Keeper had both arms about their necks. Ori jumped up and down to see over the jostling people crowding around him. “Take them to our most secure quarters,” Dáin roared in a voice audible over those of his people. “Ginnar, Tyrís, Vit, make sure none escape. Dyr, set a guard to surround you.” 

“Aye,” said one of the guards, but Ori couldn’t tell which. 

“Wait!” The scream hushed every voice in the hall. “Fetch Bilbo Baggins!” Nithi cried. “He was Thorin Oakenshield’s consort in all but name. He’ll know we speak true!” 

Ori’s blood froze in his veins. How in the world could he know that? Had Bilbo and Thorin been as obvious to everyone else as they had been to the Company, who knew them so well? Ori had thought that no one noticed Bilbo’s tears before Thorin’s tomb save for him and his fellow travelers, but maybe he had sobbed when Ori couldn’t hear. Maybe he had told someone, or the wizard had. But Hefti and Nithi knew, and now (almost as good as Nori, at his best), it seemed they wanted to pull out that information to use. 

Two could play at that. Well, three. “Bilbo’s in the Shire!” Ori called out, cupping his hands around his mouth. “He left a year ago, and he’d say you’re lying anyway!” 

Dori grabbed him by the arm through the uproar – where had Dori come from? “Dáin!” his brother shouted. “King Dáin! Secure this affair!” 

_Someone_ needed to say it. Fíli and Kíli were dead, for Mahal’s sake, and all of this had gone on for far too long. Ori wished he could say it without everyone coming down on him, without all the pieces of Dáin’s kingdom falling away from each other. These people wouldn’t have gotten this far if everyone in Erebor had let Dáin rule like he should have. He knew it. Everyone knew it. 

He darted out of court, under Hefti and Nithi’s cries that Bilbo Baggins should be summoned and the princes’ graves should be opened – how disgusting were they? – and ran as fast as he could until his legs were sore and he stood panting in front of his own doorway, a stitch in his side. Then he was in with both locks bolted behind him, beneath his covers, shaking and shaking like Bifur when his worst spells came upon him. 

Then someone shook him and he spasmed, then peeked out. His face felt so hot. “Nori?” he whispered. “How’d you get here?” 

“It’s been hours,” Nori whispered back. He’d lit the oil lamp in the wall, or someone had, maybe Dori – if it was Dori, Ori silently thanked him for not disturbing him. Shadows flickered across Nori’s nose and brows. “How are you?” 

“Tired. I’m thirsty.” 

“Just a mo’,” said Nori. “I’ll go to the ewer.” 

Ori closed his eyes while Nori walked away, and only opened them when Nori pressed the edge of a cup to his lips. “Nori,” he said after he’d drunk his fill, “where are you?” 

Nori sighed, but didn’t answer right away. “Budge over,” he said, setting the cup aside and patting the side of Ori’s bed. “I’m coming in.” 

Ori wriggled away and let Nori climb in. His brother’s body radiated heat and his chest was heaving, just like Ori’s after he’d run here. “Nori, what’re you doing?” 

“Hm?” Nori put an arm around Ori’s waist. “Quiet, little brother. Have a good sleep.” 

“Nori?” 

“My hands are clean,” said Nori, and though he clung as hard to Ori as Ori could ever remember him doing, he said no more.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Grief that comes months too late is still grief, and it will not remain there forever.

Bilbo Baggins arrived in the convoy from the Ered Luin with Lady Dís, one fortnight to the day after Nori son of Rori found Hefti and Nithi dead in their beds. He came from their quarters screaming about apoplexy, for as Óin would confirm, both Dwarves lay blue with wide, empty eyes that stared at the ceiling. 

No one dared ask how or why Nori found it necessary to pick the lock, and he gave no answer except a silent shrug whenever anyone looked his way. 

Ginnar and Lofar brought the false Fíli and Kíli before King Dáin, where they knelt far below him. “I confess I am not Fíli,” said the false Fíli in a whisper, his head hanging. “Neither is this one Kíli, but he _is_ my brother. If you execute me, please spare his life.” 

“Who are you, then?” asked Dáin, his face betraying neither yea nor nay. 

So it was confessed for all to hear: the deal struck with the sons of exiled criminals to earn forgiveness and protection from every reformed Dwarf in Ered Luin, should they braid their hair in a certain way and take on lookalike identities not their own; the story of poverty and empty bellies that came before when two sons were born the same day; the sorrow, the apologies, the love one brother felt for the other in his care. The Mannish cat’s-paw of the old Master, long gone, who fed Hefti the information necessary to find Dwalin and crush his head to pulp. Most of all, the threats to their lives. 

After that, if they were not truly welcome in Erebor, then neither were they universally reviled, exiled, or executed. One left to seek fortune or absolution in the Iron Hills, preceded by a raven of protection from Dáin in either case, while another worked quietly in the mines. 

All of this the Lady Dís learned in bits and pieces within her childhood home, the same day as Balin Fundinul fully opened his eyes and croaked for a drink of water. 

She stood between her sons’ tombs, Glóin on one side and Bilbo Baggins on the other. “You’re certain,” she said, “that my sons are buried here. There’s no chance of any more pretenders?” 

“None, lass,” said Glóin – there was no _my lady_ to be addressed among the tombs, only a bereft mother and sister whose jaw trembled with the effort of holding in her grief. Dís swallowed hard and clenched both fists. Already, her vision had begun to blur. “I saw those bodies a hundred times before we buried them.” 

“So did I,” said Bilbo, who hadn’t spoken since their party passed through the Kings’ Gate and entered the mountain proper. “Thorin and your lads, all three. I…I saw them lying here in state.” He gently touched the top of her Dwarfling’s tomb, her Kíli, while Glóin did the same on the grave of her sweetest, bravest older boy. Envy pierced her in a flash; Glóin had his only son still alive, boisterous Gimli who had arrived with his mother only today. Glóin had wept, but his cries were joyous. 

She turned to look at the Hobbit, who came up only to her chin, but had somehow survived a journey that would have killed many stronger people and a battle that had taken the three people most important to her. “Did he die troubled?” she asked. All through the months of their journey, she had ached to ask him so: whether or not Thorin had returned to his Maker contented at last.

“No,” said the Hobbit, and his chin shook. “Lady Dís, he died smiling. I forgave him and he forgave me, and…” He held a hand in front of his mouth. “I think his spirit told me that something was wrong. I had an absolute _compulsion_ to accompany you when I heard that your party was to set out from the Blue Mountains.” 

“That was months before these pretenders arrived,” Glóin pointed out. 

“I know. I know.” Tears welled in Bilbo’s eyes and spilled down his cheeks. Dís blinked when she felt wetness trickling down her own; she touched her cheekbones and her fingers came away wet. “M-my lady,” he said, and Dís braced herself for what she somehow already knew, “we were going to be wed.” He glanced towards Thorin’s tomb. Dís recognized that look; after Vili died, she had begged to throw herself into stone along with him. Only Dwalin kept her back, and now he was gone, too. The job would fall to her if Bilbo attempted the same. 

She let her head fall. “I know,” she said. “You wouldn’t have come otherwise. My brother…would have found some way to come back and warn you, if he was your One. He would defy Mahal Himself to come back from the Halls.” Dís raised her hand and let the carved silver ring on her right forefinger shine in the torchlight. When Fíli took up his apprenticeship with Dwalin, Thorin had commissioned it for her, little money though he had. “It seems he did.” 

“He pledged himself to me at Lake-town,” said Bilbo, sniffled hard, and wiped his face with both hands. “I miss him so terribly. I – I shouldn’t say that. You knew him far longer. I’m a silly Hobbit –“ He choked on the word, and for a moment, it seemed he wouldn’t be able to finish. “I knew him only a f-few months. I shouldn’t be so arrogant.” 

“He wouldn’t have pledged himself to someone who was not truly his One,” Dís said gently. She resisted the urge to touch Bilbo’s shoulder or arm. Despite his tears, he obviously needed his space. “You gave him comfort and love at the end of his life, Bilbo Baggins. You have as much right to mourn for him as I do.” 

“I loved him,” Bilbo whispered, and it was clear from the despair in his tone that he had never once allowed himself to say those words outside of his own home, or perhaps even his own mind. No, Dís decided, he had never spoken them. “He was my…he was my Thorin.” He gulped. “He was mine, and I was his.” 

She saw him break apart then. He hung his head and tore his hair in his hands, and ran to her brother’s tomb to press himself against the side. “No one in the Shire knows,” he sobbed; his body shook with weeping. “It would n-never be allowed. I couldn’t say it!” He gasped air over and over in great, rough wheezes that made Dís look at Glóin in worry. “As f-f-far as they’re concerned, I’m – a bachelor!”

For certain, this Hobbit had been her brother’s One. In her life, she had seen family and friends mourn each other’s loss to battle, disease, age, or a fast knife in their sleep, but this wrenching sorrow took her back to the years after ‘Adad’s disappearance, when one day ‘Amad refused to get out of bed and screamed for hours. Dís kept quiet, letting Bilbo Baggins cry his grief for Thorin against his cold tomb. When he quieted, she said, “You are ever welcome in Erebor, Bilbo. If you were my brother’s betrothed, then by right, you’re my brother, too.” She wiped her face. “I have my own grieving yet to do. Will you stay here?” 

“Yes,” said Bilbo, voice ragged. “Lady Dís, I wish I could have been buried here with him. Buried in stone, I think you call it. Would it b-be terribly presumptuous to say that I belong by his side?” 

Other Dwarves might have said no. Howled in outrage, even. Dís had known too many couples torn apart by war to be able to fall into shallow patterns of mind. “No,” she said, and swallowed hard. Only one of her sons had lived long enough to find his own One. Elf or Hobbit, it didn’t matter; Bilbo Baggins would be a Dwarf-friend as long as he lived. “You can stay if you wish. A – a state burial is an option at the end of your life. We consider you his consort.” 

“Please. Please.” Bilbo rose from Thorin’s grave and came back to her side, walking with the gait of the old Men she had seen in settlements – as if every joint were in great pain. “Then you are my sister,” he said, and put his hand in hers. “Could we mourn together?” 

She squeezed his work-hardened hand in hers. The calluses on his skin stood out sharply in comparison with the soft hands she’d seen on other Hobbits when she came through the Shire on trading missions. The Quest had left a physical mark on him, as Thorin left a mark on his heart. “Whatever brought you here, you’re here now,” she said, and sent a silent thanks to whatever remained of Thorin’s soul for bringing comfort to his sister and his One. “I would have an end to all this death.” 

“So would I.” 

Dís sighed, and felt tears running down her face all over again. No matter how steady her voice might be, her eyes would betray her. Thorin, Fíli, Kíli, even Dwalin, the dearest Dwarves of her heart in these past peaceful, fallow years. They had brought fruitfulness to their people again, but although she would never say it, were their lives worth it? 

She went to her knees on the cold floor and let herself fall forward. This was the time to weep, to mourn – and then to heal. Day might turn to night down here without her realization, but her kin had fallen leagues and leagues away from her without her touch at the end. “Leave me for a while,” she said quietly, and heard no more from Bilbo. 

In the darkest depths of Erebor, she who had been Princess Dís cried until her eyes swelled, her chest ached, and peace finally came upon her once more.

**Author's Note:**

>  _Dizhat-turg_ : unkempt beard (a Khuzdul insult)
> 
> I can be found at godihatethisfreakingcat on Tumblr. 
> 
> I love, cherish, and treasure any and all feedback.


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